Introduction

Rigid bodies can be viewed as a collection of particles. Therefore, we will begin by using the relationships previously developed for a system of particles. Recall that after applying Newton's second law to each particle in the system and simplifying, one can obtain the following equation.

where

• R is the resultant of the external system of forces acting on the system of particles
• m is the total mass of the system of particles
• a_G is the acceleration of the mass center of the system of particles